A perfect Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) would consist of millions of collected data points from your entire value chain. Since this is impossible in real life, assumptions have to be made. The three most important assumptions are made regarding:

As many companies do not have specific LCAs with this information, we can rely on verified market average data from LCI databases such as Idemat or Ecoinvent.

A good step to improve your footprint results is to beat these average assumptions. That's because these assumptions for missing environmental data/average data are usually always higher than raw data from your suppliers. All to be cautious and avoid greenwashing.

Providing relevant and specific data from suppliers enables you to often improve (reduce) your footprint results significantly. The first step: collect specific information from your suppliers.

There are two types of data requests at Pickler. Click on the links below to find the steps for your type of request.

Here's how to handle both:

Idemat is an independent LCI database controlled by the foundation Sustainability Impact Metrics (a spin-off of TU Delft). Idemat continuously updates its database with new average peer-reviewed, verified research on materials, energy, processes, etc. It hosts average footprint information for all widely used packaging materials and processes.

Idemat only accepts requests for new average footprint values, when:

A) A significant amount of parties (from Pickler and other Idemat users) request the same information;

B) When a widely used packaging material isn't available yet.

If you miss average values in Idemat, you can send us a request in the chat. We will contact Idemat with your request and update you with their decision. Keep in mind, your requests can be denied due to the conditions mentioned above.

However, your need is usually solved with step 2 below.

Supplier-specific data differs from Idemat data as it is unique to your product and suppliers. Instead of an market-average verified LCA reviewed by Idemat.

To ensure maximum credibility in your improved results, Pickler created acceptance criteria for unique supplier information together with Sustainability Impact Metrics.

**Please keep in mind: Pickler users are responsible for importing and maintaining correct, up-to-date data for their Pickler results.

Since LCA and EPD are not widely available, it's possible to provide the listed below input data, that should be signed off by their accountant. This is in line with the CSRD legislation.

✔ Country of origin for production

✔ Country of origin for extracted raw materials

✔ Country of warehouses

✔ Bill of material, including % of recycled materials

✔ GRS or EUCertPlast certificates

✔ Lab report on the material composition of the product

✔ Energy consumption: heat in MJ per KG + electricity in kWh per KG produced product

✔ Percentage of waste generated by the production process per material

✔ Type of used energy (% grid)

✔ Recyclability certificates (i.a.)

✔ Combustion heat generated by the product

✔ Closed loop or recycling schemes evidence:

Please note: not all suppliers are willing to share their recipe. If this is the case, Pickler can act as a trusted partner for your supplier and help them without disclosing confidential information.

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When dealing with products that are produced together or as a result of a manufacturing process, you will need to allocate costs based on the financial value of each product. This allocation should be confirmed and documented by an independent accounting firm in a letter. This process follows the 'Idemat calculation rules.'

It's important to note that if you allocate costs based on the mass of the products, it may result in environmental burdens being shifted to by-products, especially those with low value or mass. Additionally, allocating recycled or biobased materials to only a few products using the Mass Balance Approach is not allowed, as specified in the MBA for Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs)

By default, the energy mix that is used to create most of the materials in Pickler is based on general industry electricity grid mix. This means that the footprint of the previous year of the grid mix is used in the following configuration; 33% EU, 33% China, and 33% VS.
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For production processes, e.g. transforming plastic pallets into flexible films, we take the average energy grid mix of the country and region of the production location. When the production location is unknown then the gridmix of China is taken as a default. Therefore knowing the location of your supplier helps to lower your score.

✔ Production location

❌ Location of distributor

In case your supplier uses solar panels for the production proces, they are able to lower their score below the average grid mix. The evidence that can be used is;

✔ Electricity bill with attribution to the production process
✔ Energy (gas) bill with attribution to the production process

❌ 100% solar power

❌ Carbon-offsetting

It can also be possible that your supplier buys renewable energy. There are many different certificates but only a few are accepted. Please read more about certificates of origin here.

Evidence on where your packaging ends up is currently very hard to justify. Please read more about how we deal with this topic here. But there is evidence that can be used to lower your end-of-life results. The following evidence can be used:

✔ Produced/sold and returned statement (for reusables and products with deposit), preferably signed off by the company's accountant

✔ Percentage of products recycled on product level; e.g. Polytag

❌ Claims about potential recyclability

The quality of EPDs and LCA varies a lot. Generally speaking, a good LCA or EPD, is objective and well described that anyone else without prior knowledge, gets the same results by following the described steps taken. And that the used assumptions are in line with the latest common consensus in science (references).
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To ensure the data quality in Pickler, we ensure that evidence is written according to the following industry standards; ISO 14040, 14044, EN15804, and the LCA-handbook of the ILCD.

If you would like to add your specific material make sure it meets one of the following standards;

✔ LCA published in a peer-reviewed paper

✔ EPD published at IBU, Environdec or EPD-Norway. For example, packaging EPDs from the international EPD system.

✔ Doctoral dissertations

✔ University graduation and internship reports, only after a careful check

Not acceptable are:

❌ Data from the National Environmental Database

❌ Unverified publications

❌ LCAs that companies have carried out by an LCA expert/agency

Output requirement: to implement your LCA or EPD in Pickler, the report needs the specific life cycle stages (A1-D) and emission results for the environmental impact indicators - as seen in the example below:

Please note; LCAs that contain output data only become outdated more quickly and need to be reviewed more often.